Geometry of expanding absolutely continuous invariant measures and the liftability problem

We show that for a large class of maps on manifolds of arbitrary finite dimension, the existence of a Gibbs-Markov-Young structure (with Lebesgue as the reference measure) is a necessary as well as sufficient condition for the existence of an invariant probability measure which is absolutely continuous measure (with respect to Lebesgue) and for which all Lyapunov exponents are positive.